


A Perfectly Normal Day

by firefly124



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling, Temeraire - Novik
Genre: Crossover, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:23:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just when Charlie thought he'd seen everything, along came Iskierka. Harry Potter/Temeraire crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfectly Normal Day

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to fuzzyboo03 for beta-reading and richardgloucester for Brit-picking. Originally written as a birthday fic for sahiya.

It had started out as a perfectly normal day, or at least what passed for one at the Moldoveanu Dragon Preserve. In fact, it bordered on dull. Same routine as the day before and the day before that. Some days he wondered if his wife wouldn't start to find him boring, at least at the dinner table. While she couldn't talk about her job at all, at least she had interesting observations about the people there.

He almost wished for another feral round-up to break the monotony, or even a Muggle dragon sighting. Unfortunately, the dragons seemed entirely too cooperative lately, though not what one would ever call tame.

They'd just finished bathing one of the Welsh Greens with little trouble--she'd only scorched John a bit when he'd been impatient getting her to the lake--and settled her in for a bit of sun-bathing to dry off, when a commotion started just over the next slope.

"What have you done with Granby? How did you bring me here? I shall set you all on fire if you don't bring Granby to me right now!"

They'd scrambled to see what was going on, and Charlie's jaw had dropped in shock at what they found.

"What's the matter with you? Answer me, you cowards!"

Charlie had never seen a dragon quite like her. Jets of steam shot from the spines that covered her scarlet and purple body, and even more notably, she was talking. Yelling, actually. And apparently getting more and more upset at the Ridgebacks and Fireballs for not answering her.

Equally obviously, they were getting quite upset about being yelled at by a talking dragon. A preserve full of upset dragons being a bad day all round for everyone, even if it would be anything but dull, and the other dragon handlers having apparently lost control of their wits--and from the smell of it, at least one had also lost control of his or her bodily functions--Charlie decided he'd best do something.

"Hullo there!"

The alarming dragon swung her head around to focus on him, tilting her head to the side in a puzzled-looking manner.

"You are not French."

"Erm, no. No, I'm not."

"You sound English."

"Ye-es."

"Oh! Then where have you put Granby? He has not done anything wrong at all. And why are these dragons so stupid?"

"Erm, yes. Sorry, but I don't quite know who Granby is. My name's Charlie, though. What's yours?" He had the vague idea that one ought to do something in lieu of a handshake, but it didn't seem wise to get any closer to her. Of course, she was walking towards him now, which rather took the matter out of his hands, and he was almost certain running would be equally as bad an idea with this dragon as with the more usual kind.

"You are very stupid, too, then, if you do not know him. He is the best captain in all the Aerial Corps …"

"Aerial Corps?"

"… but you do not even have a uniform, so maybe that is why you have not heard of him." She snorted alarmingly, licks of flame darting out of her nostrils as she did. "Is this a breeding ground? I know I said I wanted Temeraire's egg, but I do not think we needed to come here for that. He says breeding grounds are very boring, and if they are full of rude and stupid dragons who cannot answer a simple question, I can see that he is right. How did you bring me here?"

Charlie ran a hand through his hair, belatedly realizing he'd drawn his wand with the other, for all the good it was likely to do him.

"Well, I certainly didn't do it," he said. "Though I'm sure it's some kind of magic." He wondered briefly whether he'd accidentally eaten the biscuits George had sent. That would explain rather a lot.

"Huh. There is no such thing as magic." She snorted again, forcing Charlie to duck another jet of flame. "And my name is Iskierka."

"I didn't think there were talking dragons, either, but here we are, Iskierka. Lovely name, that."

"Thank you." She fairly beamed at him.

He wasn't sure if that glowing effect was natural to her species or if she was just as vain as all the normal dragons, but at least she wasn't yelling anymore.

"Um, sir?" one of the other handlers spoke up.

"Yes, Clare?" He didn't take his eyes off Iskierka to answer.

"What would you like us to _do_?"

He looked around at the other dragons, which were still watching Iskierka warily, but surprisingly hadn't challenged her. YetIt was probably a good idea to get her away from them before that changed.

"Carry on," he said, in a moment of inspiration. "I think we'll finish our conversation over at one of the other lakes, and perhaps we can figure out how you got here and how to get you back to your Granby."

The other handlers scattered with evident relief to the relative safety of tending to the still rather edgy Ridgebacks and Fireballs.

"Oh!" Iskierka said, perking up. "There are lakes here? I have not had a good bath in ever so long, and the ocean is not the same at all. I do not like so much salt."

"Er, right. So, if you'll just hop to that peak over there…" he pointed to one that held a smallish lake that was rarely occupied, "…I'll meet you in a minute."

"Oh, but it will take you a very long time to walk that far. And if you really did not take me away from Granby, then I do not mind carrying you."

Charlie noticed for the first time that she was wearing a harness that would work rather well for riding her. Assuming one didn't mind sitting in the middle of a bunch of spines that apparently leaked steam continuously. He'd always wanted to ride a dragon, but not quite badly enough to try that.

"Actually, I'll probably get there before you," he replied. "See you there!"

She gave him a dubious look but took wing in the right direction. Once she was well enough away that he was reasonably sure he wouldn't startle her into roasting them all, he turned on his heel and Disapparated.

When she landed several yards away from him, she was clearly annoyed.

"I do not see how you walked here so fast. Men are ever so slow and you cannot fly at all."

"Actually, we can, but we usually use a broom for that and I don't have one handy." He grinned. "I told you: magic."

"Hmph." She turned away from him and walked straight into the lake, letting out a contented sigh. Of course, that might have been steam. She really did seem to run much hotter than any dragon he'd seen before.

While she splashed about, he sat down comfortably and considered the situation. Assuming he was not still sitting in his tent, hallucinating madly after foolishly eating one of those biscuits--and after all these years, he never ate anything George sent without testing it, so he was almost certain that wasn't what had happened--she wasn't just from some other place. No, if there were talking dragons, and dragons who spoke English at that, they'd have heard about it by now. Dragon tenders weren't particularly good at keeping secrets, especially about amazing dragons. She had to be from another world entirely, as weird as that sounded. Except how had she ever ended up here?

"So if you can do magic, does that mean you can send me back to Granby?" she asked after awhile.

"I hope so." He considered her carefully. "What were you doing right before you got here?"

She stepped gracefully out of the water and did not bother to shake it off. Small wonder, as it promptly evaporated.

"Temeraire was very selfish, so we were going back to fight Napoleon, except we were already very far away, so we had to get off at Gibraltar." She snorted, fortunately not in Charlie's direction. This was a good thing, as he was a bit too taken aback by what she'd said to duck. "They were not being nice to Granby at all, but he made me promise not to set them on fire."

"That was probably for the best." Charlie suppressed a shudder.

"Well, they would blame Granby if I did, even though that is not fair."

Actually, if this Granby was supposed to keep her in line, Charlie thought it was entirely fair, but it didn't seem wise to say so.

"So while he was inside talking to them, I saw something in a tree. It was too small for me, but it sparkled very nicely, and I thought Granby might like it." She scowled. Charlie hadn't realized that it was possible for her to look even more alarming. "But it was not nice at all. When I picked it off the branch, I felt very sick, and everything went spinning around, and then I was here."

"Well, that sounds ridiculously simple," he said. And it did. Textbook, almost, except for the fact it was a dragon telling him about it. Drawing his wand again, he pointed it to where she had first appeared. "_Accio used Portkey_."

The bit of chain that flew towards him was unremarkable except in that it was absurdly shiny. The better to attract a dragon's attention, no doubt.

"How did you do that?" Iskierka demanded. "I have never seen men make things fly! If they need things to fly, then they need us. Hmph!"

"We still have dragons here, even though they don't fly things around for us, Beautiful," he replied, still staring at the chain. "Thing is, if there's no magic in your world, where did this come from?"

He could hardly credit a world in which Muggles were flying about on talking dragons and didn't know about magic, and the fact she'd apparently found a Portkey seemed evidence that there was magic there somewhere.

"I told you. It was in a tree."

"Near where they were talking to your Granby in Gibraltar," he added. "Did you say you were going back to fight Napoleon?"

"Of course I did. And I had better get back, because Granby will be very upset that I'm gone. Even Wellesley will be upset, because I'm our only fire-breather, even if he did say he did not need me if I would not follow his stupid orders."

Charlie's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. He wasn't nearly the expert on Muggle history that his wife was, but he did recognize that name.

"Right, then. So, we'd best get you back, for the good of queen and country, as the Muggles say." If he could just be sure this would work. "Preferably before they realize you've not just gone for a walk."

"Queen?" Iskierka asked. "That is not what Granby says at all."

"Er, king. Right," Charlie replied distractedly.

He set the chain down on the ground and contemplated it. There was no real reason it shouldn't work, though if it didn't, there would be an unprecedented panic in _his_ Gibraltar when she appeared there. But a correctly done reversal shouldn't send her there. He hoped.

He wondered just how much difference it would make to take a bit more time here. Would she return to the same moment in time or would the time she spent here have elapsed there as well? Time travel gave him a headache.

Scanning about, he didn't see anything worth using for a second Portkey. With a shrug, he pulled off his watch and decided it would do. He laid it on the ground about a yard away from the chain and tapped first one, then the other with his wand.

"_Portus. Portus Tergiversatius._"

"What does that mean? That does not sound like English at all, nor French either." She sounded disapproving.

"It means that I hope the chain will bring you back to where you were when you first touched it. But in case it doesn't, the watch will let me follow to keep things from getting out of hand." He didn't think trying to explain his guess about not-entirely parallel worlds would do anything to reduce his headache. "And, er, I should ask you to not talk to anyone about this. Magic is supposed to be rather a secret."

"Oh, but I must tell Granby! If Napoleon has found magic and is using it to steal our dragons, then that is very bad and we must stop him from doing that as well."

"That's … a very good point." And one Charlie had been avoiding thinking about. Because dealing with that was probably going to involve Aurors and all sorts of commotion. He was surprised to find that the idea wasn't as irritating as he might have expected. "I'll see what I can find out about that part."

"How does it work?" she demanded.

"The same way it brought you here. When you touch it, it will bring you back."

"Is it going to make me feel sick again? I do not like to feel sick."

"It might." He gave her a sympathetic smile. "But it didn't last very long, did it? And then you'll be back to your Granby." Or so he hoped.

"That is true." She brightened and reached for it.

"Wait! There's one more thing."

"What?" She pulled back and tilted her head at him.

"If it doesn't seem right, if you're not where you should be and your Granby isn't there, I want you to fly to the highest point on The Rock. That's where I'll be." It was the best he could come up with on short notice.

"All right then. And you will help me find him?"

"I'll certainly try."

She nodded and reached out a talon to pick up the chain, promptly disappearing in a very hot whirl of air.

Charlie picked up the watch and felt the familiar tug just behind his navel. He wondered where a dragon would feel it, since they didn't have navels. Perhaps that was why it made her feel so ill.

Fortunately, there was no one around when he landed atop The Rock. After an hour, he was also reasonably sure Iskierka hadn't been transported to _this_ Gibraltar. He only hoped that meant she'd gone back to her own.

Tapping the watch again, he charmed it to bring him back to the reserve.

It had started out as a perfectly normal day. Merlin knew it wasn't going to end like one. He'd actually have something worth telling his wife about at dinner tonight, if not sooner. This might just be a Department of Mysteries sort of thing, though it might be a conflict of interest to put her on it.

With a grin, he headed off to the Moldoveanu Dragon Preserve staff building to send a message to the Ministry.

_Fin_


End file.
